Effective Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Website

Reasons Why You Need to Work On Your Website Load Times!

Increasing your website speed is essential if you want to attract new viewers to your site. Many times, great content is not enough to keep your viewers’ attention. You need to have images, graphs, videos and a compelling reason to keep your visitor interested and engaged. If your website loads slow due to having images, graphs, screen shots or videos, they may never really see what you have to offer. So making sure your website is optimized for speed is very important to your visitors and for ranking in Google.  

Wordpress Website Hosting

One of the first areas we are going to look at is your hosting. If you are hosting a large site with many images or videos, a shared hosting like GoDaddy or Hostgator is not going to cut it. You need to find premium hosting solutions to power your website. This is one of the first steps to ensure your website load times are fast. There are several hosting providers we recommend: LiquidWeb WP Engine – 2 Months Free Annual Plan WPXHosting  

Rent a VPS

Renting your own Virtual Private Server will create a large difference on your site. Most serious businesses and famous bloggers opt to have their own VPS because of its speed and security. Shared hosting can create some complications on your site, especially if one of its websites is experiencing trouble. Many times, the ease of having your own VPS is worth the extra cash. We use and recommend Liquid Web and have many different options of VPS/VDS you can take advantage of.  

Keep Your Pictures Optimized

Another tip to increase your website speed is to pay attention to your pictures. Pictures usually take up a lot of time to load, especially if you have not edited them properly. If your site is picture heavy, then it will definitely take longer to load especially if they are not optimized. Most people would opt to place thumbnails or smaller resolution pictures on the pages to save on space, as well as load time. You may think that optimizing your images so they will load faster will take up a lot of time on your end. It is not necessarily so. There are many programs that can help you optimize all of your pictures at once, so that they are all in the same size. That should be so much less effort for you. To make it even faster for your viewers to access your site, you may also want to try the lazy load technique, where the pictures load while the viewer is scrolling down the page. This saves a lot of loading time and it is very user friendly. This will save your viewers bandwidth, especially for viewers that do not read posts all the way through. A great plugin that works to help optimize your images is Imagify. Imagify will optimize your images with just a few clicks of a button. They provide different programs based on your data usage per month. You can also use a CDN to help with optimizing your images. A CDN is known as a content delivery network and “is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver pages and other Web content to a user, based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and the content delivery server”. Seen published on http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CDN.html. A good CDN is Max CDN and has very competitive pricing.  

Use YouTube

Using YouTube for videos can actually keep the loading time down on your posts and pages. Placing a video directly on your site can cause some drag while people try to access your content. If you do not like using YouTube, there are other streaming services that are readily available to use online. Putting lesser loads on your server will make your site easier to access. For a more optimal user experience, remember to disable the Auto Play feature on your videos. This can be a little unsettling for your viewers and some of them may get annoyed enough to leave your page. Give a great description of the video you want them to see. If they are at work and the auto play comes on, they potentially can bounce off your website immediately. Check out our web design do’s and don’ts.  

Keep Your Posts Organized

Keeping your main page neat and organized is also a good way to keep your loading speed fast enough to gain more viewers. Instead of showing the full posts on the main page, you can choose to show only the first few paragraphs. Excerpts are sneak peeks to the main content, and it is a great way to build interest too. You may also want to make sure that you only feature around 4 to 8 posts on the main page in order to reduce the load time. You can have a load more button that allows more posts to be loaded just by a click. You can also utilize pages (page 1, 2, 3 for your posts), or you can develop a good database that can make your audience get to the content that they want faster. People will definitely appreciate your site’s efficiency. A great way to keep your posts organized is utilizing a silo structure on your website.  

Wordpress Settings & Plugins for Website Speed Optimization

When it comes to wordpress, it is a database website that has a lot of functionality and plugins to not only speed up your site, but also help you optimize your website. It is important to use plugins that have little drag and drain on your website and help improve your websites performance. We tried all of the following WP Caching Plugins:

• W3 Total Cache
• WP Super Cache
• WP Fastest Cache
• Zen Cache (Now Comet Cache)
• WP Rocket

The clear winners for a caching plugin on our website speed were WP Rocket and WP Fastest Cache. I need to also mention we only did the paid versions of WP Rocket and WP Fastest Cache. The other caching plugins we were only using the free version. We opted to use WP Rocket for several reasons. Some of the reasons we choose to go with WP Rocket:

• Cost for many websites (WP Fastest Cache charges per website installation)
• Integration with Imagify was easy
• Optimal setup was easy
• Easy integration with Max CDN

As far as website speed loading time, it was very close. WP Rocket was a slight bit faster than WP Fastest Cache. On WP Rocket we usually load between 1.2s and 1.5s with a webpage that is 3.1mb.  

Make Use of Your WordPress Plugins

Try to check through the plugins on your site and find the ones that are no longer being used. Unused plugins can create a lot of drag on your WordPress site. Take a look through your list. Sometimes we can forget, and deleting the things we do not used can create seconds of difference. On the internet, that is a big difference already. You may even want to study how these plugins function. You can incorporate these without having to put the entire plugin on the site. A few codes on your functions.php can give you the same benefits a widget can offer you. You also want to keep your wordpress plugins up-to-date for efficiency and security reasons.  

Pay Attention to Your WordPress Settings

There is also a way to increase the loading speed through your WordPress settings. You may have noticed pingbacks and trackbacks on your WordPress. This is something that is enabled by default so that you can get notified whenever other blogs interact with you. This is a great WordPress feature, but this can also affect loading speeds. This adds on new data to your post, which in turn makes the post heavier. Turning this feature off will let you browse through your site a little bit faster.  

Do Your Maintenance Work

WordPress is based on a MySQL Database, which means that the database gets larger whenever your posts are edited or when comments are left on the site. Always remember that every time you revise your post, the last version will be automatically saved to the database. Cleaning this up will allow your page to load much faster. Spam comments must also be deleted. While it is great to have comments on your page, spam comments do nothing for you and it will only slow the page down. There are plugins on WordPress that can help you do these maintenance tasks on your site. Since plugins can create a bit of a slow down on your site, you might want to enable this only once a month. For the rest of the time, you can keep it disabled. WP Rocket takes care of the maintenance work for you as well. It will cleanup old revisions and will also delete spam comments from your database for you each week on auto pilot. Also try not to keep website page redirects to a minimum. Sometimes you have to redirect pages, posts, categories and even tags to a new URL. Each redirect added to the page, can and will slow down the page load times.  

Cut Down on the Word Art, Widgets and Graphics. (If You Have To)

The first thing that you should do is to cut down on the word art. Many times, glitzy word art can slow down a page significantly, and it is not a pretty picture when it refuses to show up on screen. In some ways, word art can be unnecessary. It is fine to use it for titles, or for details that absolutely need the attention. There is no need to overdo. You can try using a neat and legible font instead and pay attention to proper spacing. Nice and simple goes a long way, and it will even make your site look fresh and professional. Remember to take down pop ups and widgets that are not of the utmost importance. Decorations can be attractive, but you will have to consider that not all viewers will appreciate that. They will always want good content, and they want it fast. Widgets and other decorations can sometimes take away the experience.  

Majestic Warrior The blog post Effective Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Website is courtesy of website - MajesticWarrior

Majestic Warrior

18631 N 19th Ave #158

Phoenix, AZ 85027

(888) 717-6864

https://goo.gl/maps/ZwEcL5EFVUr

from http://www.majesticwarrior.net/website-design/optimized/effective-ways-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-website/

Majestic Warrior Launches Auto Repair Marketing Specialty

Phoenix AZ based Auto Repair Marketing by Majestic Warrior offers a range of services designed to improve the performance of digital marketing efforts for auto repair businesses. The Majestic Warrior team can provide techniques and tips to increase traffic and increase website conversions.

Phoenix AZ - July 11, 2017 /MarketersMedia/ — Majestic Warrior and Shannon Adams are pleased to announce the launch of the company’s new auto repair marketing services. The professionals at Majestic are proud to have the knowledge and experience to provide some of the best auto shop web design and local SEO services. It is important to understand and know what the auto repair and transmission repair online marketing space needs to make the client's shop stand out. The professionals can take a client's auto shop business to new heights with the help of online marketing services and website design innovations. A spokesperson for Majestic Warrior explains, “Our internet marketing specialists can help you establish your auto repair business as one of the most reputable names in your local area. We can do this by strengthening your online brand and broadening your reach. Our web design for auto repair shops is just one component of the service we provide to our customers. Aesthetically pleasing, functional and responsive websites help each visitor to the site have a positive experience.” In addition to offering website development and ideas, MW also provides a wide range of online marketing services. Obtaining a website is not difficult, but it can be challenging to ensure that the site works toward increasing the client's business. The team can create a design and put the pages together in a way that appeals to website visitors. Majestic Warrior techniques are applied in a way that the rankings of the site are targeted and placed before the maximum number of potential new customers. In addition to producing high-quality websites, the team of professionals at Majestic Warrior works with clients to promote the website online with services such as: social media marketing, SEO services, search engine marketing, Google maps optimization and reputation marketing. The team offers some of the best digital marketing services there is for auto shops. Contact Info: Name: Shannon Adams Organization: Majestic Warrior Address: 18631 N 19th Ave #158, Phoenix AZ 85027 Phone: (888) 717-6864 Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKAPZOcMlk Find the original press release found published at http://marketersmedia.com/majestic-warrior-launches-auto-repair-marketing-site/216172

The post Majestic Warrior Launches Auto Repair Marketing Specialty See more on: website of Majestic Warrior

from http://www.majesticwarrior.net/about/launch-of-auto-repair-marketing-specialty/

How Branded Links can Maximize Your Search Visibility in Search Engines

When launching an internet marketing campaign or simply promoting content from your website, one of the primary goals is for the website to appear in the top results list in various search engines. In this way, you can drive more website traffic or turn those visitors into actual customers for the products and/or services that you offer.  

Branded Keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Basically, you are targeting local search engine optimization for your website. One of the easiest & safest ways you can do this is to utilize branded keyword anchor text. Branded keywords are the particular words or terms that users may type in search engines when they look for your site or your products and services. These include your brand name, website name, variations of your name or any other property that may direct them to your site. This means the user has already heard about you and they are trying to look for you using Google, Yahoo or Bing. Thus, the use of branded keywords may serve you several advantages:

• Branded keywords provide you one of the easiest means to rank for a particular search/query result. Unlike generic keywords, your unique company name or brand name sets you aside from your competitors on the same niche.
• Investing/bidding on branded keywords may incur relatively lower advertisement costs since it is already specifically relevant to your company name.

Thus, branded keywords can vitally lead people to your site – without having to allocate much more funds from your campaign budget.  

Backlinks - Quality & Quantity

Meanwhile, another factor that also influences search rankings is the number of backlinks a particular website has. These are simply the links from other websites, pages, directories, press releases or any other medium on the internet that directs visitors to your website. It’s not just about how many backlinks you have, but also the quality of the backlinks that matter for today’s SEO standards. (We will dive deeper into this with much more detail on another post)

Types of Links You Want to Acquire:

• Niche Related
• Authoritative Links
• Trusted Links
• Seed Site Links

Some examples of high quality niche related links using our website as an example (these are also authoritative and trusted sites):

• Clutch
• Sortfolio
• UpCIty
• Nace
• TopSEOs
• Moz
• SEMRush
• View large list of niche related sites here

  These serve as one of the main indicators that search engines use to interpret your content to be relevant to a particular search query. In turn, the more backlinks you have may also mean the more ‘votes’ you have from different websites. These websites may be in a way, referring to or recommending you because of the quality of your content, the credibility of your site, and etc.  

Incorporating Anchor Texts in Backlinks

One way to create backlinks is through the use of anchor texts. Anchor text is simply the visible text that is present in a given hyperlink. Since backlinks are used as an important basis for the relevance of your website to a particular search query, the anchor texts should be also able to provide contextual information of the link’s destination. Thus, it may be useful to use branded anchor text backlinks or branded mixed with a keyword phrase. However, it is important to note that the basis of backlinks as indicators for search rankings do not only refer to the plain numbers of websites pointing to your page. It is also rather influenced by the popularity and the credibility as well of those sites that refer you among many other factors.  

What are Branded Links and how they can help in SEO

Branded links are essentially a directory or url that was created out of the brand name or any related term that can be associated to the name of your company, the content that you share, and etc. The use of branded links is also beneficial for but not limited to the following reasons:

• They are shorter and easier to read and thus, are easier to remember.
• Unlike simple shortened links, branded links make you unique.
• Since it incorporates brand name, it thus gives your brand more exposure and gives users an idea of the content that you share.
• They are a safer backlink anchor text to your website (Google has stressed the importance your brand should be)

 

How to Create and Use Branded Links

When using branded links, it is important that you do not only formulate a link that incorporates your brand or website name. Make them as short and relevant as possible to the content that you are trying to present or the product that you promote.

• There are services or tools, which you can use to shorten your links. (bitly.com, Goo.gl are 2 that are among our favorites to use) (You can also do some Ninja stuff using 301 redirects from these link shortener services)
• For branded links, it is especially convenient to use custom or branded domains that you can acquire for a low cost.

For example, the most popular companies have their custom domains as shown: www.fb.com for www.Facebook.com has www.fb.com www.Amzn.com for www.amazon.com The latter are not really different websites, but clicking on or typing those will still redirect you to the original website.

• Keep in mind that the domain extension doesn’t necessarily have to be .com. It can be everything that you can incorporate to your brand name. For example, pepsi.com uses pep.si as one of their branded links.

So basically, you create lists or particular keywords which you can use for your branded links, use a link shortener tool or service, choose and acquire a custom domain, and share these links to your different communication channels.  

Backlinks and Link Profile

All of these backlinks then are what that make up your backlink anchor text profile, which is also known as your link profile. When you create a backlink, this is indexed by Google and places it into a database (which is your link profile) that points to your specific website. From then on, the algorithm is employed which then establishes your rankings. As mentioned earlier, it is important that your website is not just credible, but that your link profile shall be just as credible. For example, if you are using too much of anchor texts that partially or exactly match particular keywords in search queries, you make it seem obvious for search engines that you are just trying to rank for that particular keyword. So, what then makes a good link profile? It is important that the link profile is as natural as possible. It is important that they do not only look natural but they themselves should be natural. A natural link profile should satisfy the following:

• The websites that point to your site should have an established authority or credibility for the content that they share.
• It is useful that the content of your website are also relevant to the websites that refer you.
• Your links that should points out to where they are intended unlike misleading, spam sites or links
• Most importantly, the anchor texts you employ should be as diverse as possible.

 

Some Types of Anchor Text to Use:

• Branded (Variations)
  • Examples: Majestic Warrior, MajesticWarrior, (Majestic Warrior), Majestic Warrior Marketing, Majestic Warrior Media, Majestic Warrior Digital, majesticwarriormarketing, majesticwarriormedia, majesticwarriordigital, MW Marketing, MW Media etc, Shannon Adams, Majestic Warrior – Shannon Adams, Shannon Adams
• Naked URL (Variations)
  • Examples: http://www.majesticwarrior.net/, http://www.majesticwarrior.net, majesticwarrior.net/, www.majesticwarrior.net, http://majesticwarrior.net/, http://majesticwarrior.net etc
• Generic
  • Examples: click here, company, website, this website, this blog, our website, expert website, visit website, check out this website, check out the blog, visit the blog, visit this page, why this company, check out this company etc.
• No Anchor Text
  • Example: no actual text hyperlink
• Image
  • Example: links from an image to target page
• Branded with Keyword Phrase
  • Examples: Majestic Warrior SEO, Majestic Warrior web design, majestic warrior digital marketing, majestic warrior internet marketing
• URL with Keyword Phrase
  • Examples: http://www.majesticwarrior.net/seo/ - Search Engine Optimization services, http://www.majesticwarrior.net/website-design/ Web Design, http://www.majesticwarrior.net/online-marketing-services/ online marketing services, www.majesticwarrior.net/online-marketing-services/reputation/ reputation marketing services
• Generic with Keyword Phrase
  • Examples: click here for seo services, visit our webs design here, check out our internet marketing services here
• LSI Keyword Phrases
  • Examples: website optimization, optimization of your website, mobile website optimization, optimize your websites for search engines etc..
• Branded with LSI
  • Examples: Majestic Warrior optimization of your website, majestic warrior’s website optimization, majestic warrior’s website design
• Sentences with Target Keywords Included
  • Example: How to Properly do SEO and make your company stand out!
• Exact Match Keyword Phrase
  • Examples: search engine optimization, website design, local seo, SEO, internet marketing services, digital marketing agency etc..

  Notice how we have exact match keyword phrases as last. In today’s SEO environment you want to look as natural as possible and exact match keyword phrases are not natural. You want to use these types of anchor text on your most powerful links from niche related websites. You also want to avoid areas of syndication of exact match anchor text. Syndication is a great tool, but in this case can do a lot of harm when you are using exact match anchor text for your backlinks.  

Diversifying Your Link Profile

To emphasize the last point, a diverse link profile suggests that you are not simply trying to rank for your profile but it is that many websites are actually vouching for you because of your content. This is then where the use of branded links comes into play. As mentioned, branded links make it easier for you to target SEO. Thus, these should also have a good share on your anchor text percentage. One of the ways to diversify your link profile is to use branded links with keywords. As SEO analysts would recommend, 35% to 90% of your link profile should at least tell something about your brand. Diversifying your links can also mean where you get the links from and link sources. We will discuss this a lot more in depth on another post.   

Anchor Text Percentages to Follow:

Branded Variation Anchor Text - 60-75% Naked Link Variations – 20-25%% Generic - 5-10% LSI/Partial Match – Less Than 3% Exact Match Anchors – Less than 1%   Also Remember Keyword Density for Each Page: (Helps avoid over optimization) 1 Word Phrases Less than 3% 2 Word Phrases Less than 2% 3 Word Phrases Less than 1%   This is on a page by page basis, Google does not rank websites, it ranks web pages. Each page should have this type of formula.   In conclusion, the use of branded keywords and branded backlinks are both essential in increasing your search visibility in different search engines. Branded keywords are specifically important because it can easily point out to your brand name. You can utilize those for the backlinks that you create which is also one of the important indicators for search rankings. The most important key is to balance the use of different types of backlinks. You do not under-optimize or else you may just flank in the rankings as much as you do not over-optimize that you may be flagged by Google for penalties.

How Branded Links can Maximize Your Search Visibility in Search Engines Find more on: #webdesign by Majestic Warrior

from http://www.majesticwarrior.net/seo/how-branded-links-can-maximize-your-search-visibility-in-search-engines/